Re: Who is Ciro Discepolo?

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Hello Tom
Tom wrote:I have only one reason for posting this on the traditional forum. I'm hoping Margherita sees this as she is most likely to know of this astrologer. Is he well known in Italy? Europe? A friend asked me and I've never heard of him.
Ciro Discepolo is very famous in Italy.

He mostly works with solar return travels, here is famous for having sent people on the other side of iron wall before 1989, or in the smallest towns of Alaska or Amazonian forest.

My idea his practice is mostly based on Volguine and Barbault. But he sometimes published in his journal Ricerca 90 aphorisms about solar returns from Giuntini and Argoli.

He is not neither a traditional or psycho astrologer, but very near to French astrology of 1900.

margherita
Traditional astrology at
http://heavenastrolabe.wordpress.com

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Margherita wrote:
He is not neither a traditional or psycho astrologer, but very near to French astrology of 1900.
Thanks Margherita,

I saw his book on solar returns (which has been translated into English) last year but I thought he was a purely modern astrologer. Has anyone here read it? Is it worth purchasing?

http://www.solarreturns.com/

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

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Mark wrote: I saw his book on solar returns (which has been translated into English) last year but I thought he was a purely modern astrologer. Has anyone here read it? Is it worth purchasing?

http://www.solarreturns.com/

Mark

mmhh.... for psycho astrologers yes, because his books are completely free of Edipus, Sun as symbol of self, spiritual evolution, it's just astrology and nothing else.

For traditional astrologers not.

Some points are similar to traditional approach, for example he defines as malefic Mars or Saturn in 1st, 12th or 6th house, and this it's easier to understand for me than for modern astrologers, still Discepolo is freaked with solar return travels, he loves to arrange planets in the houses obliging the native to the strangest birthday pilgrimage.

You can have some examples in his blog

http://cirodiscepolo.blogspot.com/

he replies to the letters of his fans even in English.

margherita
Traditional astrology at
http://heavenastrolabe.wordpress.com

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I saw his book on solar returns (which has been translated into English) last year but I thought he was a purely modern astrologer. Has anyone here read it? Is it worth purchasing?

http://www.solarreturns.com/

Mark[/quote]

Hi Mark and others who might consider buying this book,

I bought Ciro Discepolo? book Transits and Solar Returns more than an year ago and after seeing the content and reading his 30 rules put it down and did not open it until this week.
Now, from a strictly traditional point of view this book is pure garbage, but so it is from the modern point of view because it is sounds outright brutal to modern people?s psyche.

The book consists of his 30 rules for solar revolutions and then goes on to give cook book non-psychological ?delineations? for the 10 planets transiting through each of the 12 Houses. Of all the 550 pages these cook book descriptions take 385! Then he gives 100 natal charts of famous persons (95% Italians ? there is good internet data for at least 80% of the natives, for some there are only a few sentences both in English and Italian ? I don?t speak Italian and used google translator ) and 100 revolutions to these charts which include a notable event in the natives?lives. Prior to giving his 100 charts and their revolutions, he presents some research of his that uses lots of statistics put in a program using algorithms to calculate ?The Index of Risk for the Year?. In short, 20-40 ? threshold, 40-60 ?a fairly high score corresponding to difficult, tough years, but at a much lower level?, 60-100 ? ?an extremely high index, unfailingly corresponding to dramatic years for the native?.

At the end of the book he goes into a very very dangerous territory. Now, so that that there arise no misunderstanding, I have nothing against this guy, I have never met him, but this is an extremely sensitive issue and much more attention must be paid to it, because given enough knowledge one can mercilessly exploit human vulnerability. What I am getting at is human life its longevity and issues of predermination versus ?free will?. First Ciro presents some outrageous research that pertains to the spread of cancer and it turns out that instead of 1 out 7 women that has it in recent years it is 1 out of 3 that has it and later he says that: ?I think that with such a frightful pollution in our own organism, at least those who are over 50, those who are 55-60 like me ? we will all get cancer. All ? it does mean everybody, every last one. On the other hand I am also convinced that medical science has made notable progresses, thus a good amount of those affected by malignant tumour would be saved?. Then he says that: ? If you have in your body a disease that dates back ten years, an aimed birthday cannot protect you per cent. It could protect you, roughly speaking, 80 per cent, and it could protect you for the future, not for the past.?
Then he says that one must relocate for EVERY solar return, ?there is no use of making it every second year or so?. Do you see where I am getting at? Do you see how easy it is to frighten people and take advantage of their fear of death? I am not saying he is purposefully trying to scare and manipulate people into booking consultations with him every year. For the record, I think he really believes in what he writes and after all ? he has relocated 16 000 people to other parts of the world on their birthday, which is an impressive experience, but the thing is that clients do not know Astrology and can easily by mislead or influenced. Yes, he has written about 50 books, yes he has shared a great part of his knowledge so that practitioners at least can learn his rules and not have to pay money every year for a consultation, but still this is very dangerous and virtually impossible to prove that it will make a difference and you won?t get sick/die if you relocate because you cannot be in two places (at least in body) at the same time.

Now for the astrology part.
If you want to learn how to read a revolution (solar return) this book will NOT teach you, not at all! Still, you will learn that the positions of the revolution chart are more important and stronger than the transits, which is quite a revelation of his, addressed to modern practitioners.
This guy only uses revolutions, nothing else, as least as far as this book is concerned. No eclipses even. Of course, he uses 19-20 century techniques so nothing traditional. As for the more modern, he does not mention secondary progressions or solar arcs. Only revolutions!
Also and obviously, he uses the place where the native was/will be during the revolution, but in 95% of his charts he uses Italians or, more importantly, his examples spent their revolution in a close by town that does not alter the angles. There are only 1-2 cases which do. Yes, he has written many books on the subject and is considered a big authority (by whom?), but this is no way to prove that the local location chart is more important than the birth place revolution. He should have chosen at least 20% of his 100 charts in order to show that and note that I am not taking a position on this here.
His ?analysis? of the revolutions consists of naming the aspects the revolution planets make to the natal ones and the angles and indicating the number of the risk index for the year. That is it! I found that extremely boring and exasperating. Also, when a bad event happened in an example chart, he justifies it by quoting his index and some of his 30 rules. Note, he does not differentiate the nature of the accident, (say car crash, debt, resignation, disease etc,) nor does he show you how to, all that is enough for him to include this given revolution in the book is that it meets his risk index criteria and has some of his rules. No wonder that he says that he has hundreds and hundreds of such charts and planned to include them but changed his mind because the book would have been about 1000 pages.
He uses the outer planets, which is fine but then he makes use of the minor aspects and then we have a problem because each chart has many aspects and many ?events? when you look at it this way. Of course, all the cases are on hindsight. What is more is that he sometimes uses wide orbs for the outers, just to justify an event. In one chart he used a 3-4 degrees out of sign trine between revolution Pluto and a natal planet, which is outright ridiculous, knowing how slow Pluto moves.
In some charts where the revolution showed nothing significant (which would be shown by the more powerful traditional techniques he does not know about) he is just looking for something to find. In some cases when there are fewer aspects and he has nothing, he says that soft aspects of the outer planets in the revolution can be very damaging.

So, where is the merit in this book?
When I bought it and opened it, I was disappointed (the book does not allow one to see the contents, otherwise I would not have bought it), but now I am not. The reason for this is the charts and events he has shown (be aware that some charts include wrongly written year and that the program he uses does not directly show the degrees of the planets) are really significant and make for a nice database of cases. It took me 4 days to organize it and put it into my computer programs and now I am done and ready to investigate the cases using Medieval and Hellenistic Astrology. So if you are looking for investigation cases, that is, charts belonging to natives that went under investigation/arrest, or for prison cases, including life sentences, or for accidents like broken feet or violence and of course death and also seeing the death of someone close to you from your own chart or how the chart of a died native lives on and continues to show significant events to people close to them, then this book is worth it.
This book is also worth it for the direct and blunt language that you will find (no psychology): disease, death, debt, resignation, i.e. accidents that are a natural part of life. I also enjoyed the active approach he takes (he calls it active astrology)and the other alternatives he gives for mitigating malefic configurations, if one cannot relocate. It was also very refreshing to read how hard and miserable life can be and how on every lottery/promotion winner there are hundreds of losers.
At the end of the book Ciro expresses a view that is outright ancient, i.e. appeasing the ?gods?, that is, if you cannot relocate every year and you have nasty configurations, to look for something that might be giving you trouble in your body and to undergo surgery 1 month after the revolution, which is something I found really interesting. He calls this ?the exorcism of a symbol?.

So if you are looking for a book on revolutions/annual techniques, in order of preference, I would go with Regulus Astrology?s ?A Rectification Manual?, Morin?s Books 23 and 22, Abu Mashar on Solar Revolutions (translated by Ben Dykes), Zadanfarrukh-Al Andarazaghar on Anniversary Horoscopes (translated by Charles Burnett and Ahmed Al-Handy) and Dorotheus?s Carmen. The first 2 contain many examples, the last 3 have more than enough theory, although almost 50% of Abu Mashar? book remains to be translated.
Ancient and Chinese Astrology:

https://www.100percentastrology.com/

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Zagata wrote: I bought Ciro Discepolo? book Transits and Solar Returns more than an year ago and after seeing the content and reading his 30 rules put it down and did not open it until this week.
Now, from a strictly traditional point of view this book is pure garbage, but so it is from the modern point of view because it is sounds outright brutal to modern people?s psyche.
Ciro Discepolo is neither a traditional astrologer nor a psycho astrologer.

He is mostly based on French astrology, Volguine, Les Cahiers Astrologiques, and especially Andre Barbault.
For what I understood following this forum, Andre Barbault is not very known in the English speaking world, but in Italy is reputed the most important living astrologer.
Then he (Discepolo) says that one must relocate for EVERY solar return, ?there is no use of making it every second year or so?. Do you see where I am getting at? Do you see how easy it is to frighten people and take advantage of their fear of death?
Relocated solar returns (or as he calls "aimed solar returns") are Disepolo big number, the strong point, we know. Recently one of his followers wrote that the singer Lucio Dalla would have not died if he had relocated his solar return......

Discepolo- I've already written this in the past- is famous too here because before 1989 he sent for the best relocated return people beyond the Iron Wall, even in the midst of the Red Square if necessary :)

Not a book for traditional astrologers, but he is not so far a traditional reading, French astrology is heavily based at least on Morin,

margherita
Traditional astrology at
http://heavenastrolabe.wordpress.com

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Hmm interesting.
I'm reading an excerpt of his book on Solar Returns and he says about "Jupiter is in the Third House of SR" the following:
" It may announce a new job, or a new love affair, or a new therapy involving commuting ? usually, a happy and easy commuting."
Well, I did have a love affair but I don't know where the analogy of Jupiter in 3rd with Love Affiars?! :???:
I'm reading some of his other stuffs too and found them amazingly accurate.
Accurate in non traditional way which makes me confused.
Last edited by Ile on Fri Apr 20, 2012 8:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Yet another intriguing statement of his is this:
I have explained a lot of times, in my books, because it is easy to show that the arcs of direction and the Primary Directions, Secondary, Symbolic, etc. don't work.
I don't know if the statement is taken out of context or not, but it seems to me that this guy uses Solar Returns and Transits only.

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NatanEpsilon wrote:Hmm interesting.
I'm reading an excerpt of his book on Solar Returns and he says about "Jupiter is in the Third House of SR" the following:
" It may announce a new job, or a new love affair, or a new therapy involving commuting ? usually, a happy and easy commuting."
Well, I did have an love affair but I don't know where the analogy of Jupiter in 3rd with Love Affiars?! :???:
I'm reading some of his other stuffs too and found them amazingly accurate.
Accurate in non traditional way which makes me confused.
A really "precise" delineation of Jupiter in the 3rd with awful lots of "mays" and "ors". Of course, he's got the keys to precisely unlock the future the like the world has never seen before.
Bah!

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cor scorpii wrote:
NatanEpsilon wrote:Hmm interesting.
I'm reading an excerpt of his book on Solar Returns and he says about "Jupiter is in the Third House of SR" the following:
" It may announce a new job, or a new love affair, or a new therapy involving commuting ? usually, a happy and easy commuting."
Well, I did have an love affair but I don't know where the analogy of Jupiter in 3rd with Love Affiars?! :???:
I'm reading some of his other stuffs too and found them amazingly accurate.
Accurate in non traditional way which makes me confused.
A really "precise" delineation of Jupiter in the 3rd with awful lots of "mays" and "ors". Of course, he's got the keys to precisely unlock the future the like the world has never seen before.
Bah!
Yes, and those 'may' and 'or' are giving to the people many options to which they can relate. His delineation of Jupiter in 3rd (and for each house) are almost 2 pages long each. So, there is no miss-guessing, something from all the correspondences must relate to the native.

Just today a friend of mine went to Monte Negro (country near by my country - Macedonia) to visit some modern astrologer by name Branko.
That astrologer made predictions for Novak Djokovic for 2011 (he predicted to him the number of finals he will gonna play and the number of medals he will win). After this his price get 3 times bigger. For ordinary people these kind of predictions are like miracle. The friend was taking this as a proof to convince me that modern astrology has greater accuracy then traditional.
This same astrologer had predicted to the girlfriend of another friend of mine that she will meet at certain date (correctly!) a guy who's name starts with S.

I don't know what kind of techniques they use, but I assume that many of the modern predictive astrologers who are very accurate in their predictions, are to some level psychics. I do not have other explanation for this phenomena. Why? Because I've studied modern astrology for years and I know that there is no greater amount of predictive techniques then the traditional astrology has.

Sorry for the digression but I had the need to share this story here.